BSG | Wizard
The decision to become a wizard is only made by the delusional, the fearless, and those seeking their own death. The first step is to become an apprentice to an existing wizard - if you can even find one, since wizards are so vanishingly rare, and many don’t bother to take on apprentices anyway.
The next step is to survive. Less than 1 in 10 apprentices will survive the next few decades of magical study and servitude - in addition to the potential for catastrophic failed spells, or getting in the way of a magical duel, just being exposed to the radioactive ambient magic of the wizard’s presence wears away at their sanity, their health, and their self-control.
The next step is to thrive. Of those apprentices who do survive, many will retire to become a hermit, their grip on reality completely shattered. Others will wander the lands, taking pennies from peasants in exchange for half-baked spells which can spark tiny fires or move small objects - the only magical power they’ve managed to attain, despite all their suffering.
But some apprentices, less than 1 in 100, will grow powerful enough that their master starts to view them as a threat. At this stage, many fall prey to their own master’s jealousy - wizards usually take on apprentices to serve them hand and foot, not expecting them to actually outgrow their servile status. Wizards such as Gordias will nip any upstart apprentice in the bud, killing them off before they can become a true rival.
But apprentices blessed with an unusually merciful master - or who are able to flee their master’s wrath alive - learn enough, and absorb enough magic from their master’s presence, that they become fully-fledged wizards themselves. Ironically, despite the decades of study, it’s the constant exposure to magic that is the most important step in this process.
A wizard’s reserve of magic can be viewed as an heirloom that grows more powerful over time, leaking into their apprentices and the land around them. Most apprentices are destroyed by this exposure, but some who are able to weather the onslaught will take the magic and store it in their own souls, awaiting the day they can eclipse their teacher.
Only very few wizards in history have actually managed to kill their own master while they were still an apprentice. Pestia ranks among this number, assassinating her cruel master with an especially subtle breed of pox.
Some speculate that becoming a wizard is not actually the end point of their development. Many wizards theorize that the beings described as ‘gods’ are actually wizards who have hatched - exceptionally old and powerful archmages who have transcended Celest Ath entirely.
